


Diaz, Dummies, Doilies and Dish Soap

by girlyjuice



Category: Brooklyn Nine-Nine (TV)
Genre: Friendship, Police Academy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-06
Updated: 2015-02-06
Packaged: 2018-03-10 20:35:18
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,170
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3302621
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/girlyjuice/pseuds/girlyjuice
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Rosa Diaz is in trouble. This was supposed to be her last chance.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Diaz, Dummies, Doilies and Dish Soap

Rosa Diaz is in trouble. It’s only her third week at police academy and her classmates are already scared shitless of her.

She pretends that’s what she wants, of course. Like she acts that specific way to achieve that specific effect.

But on the inside, she’s reeling, because this was supposed to be her last chance.

Rosa’s had anger issues for as long as she can remember. Catholic school was a nightmare; her teachers were always sending her to the principal’s office with hastily scribbled notes complaining of Rosa’s “sinful rage” and “potential demon possession.” It didn’t help that all her classmates were dummies and brats, most of them white and a little too curious about the curly-headed Hispanic girl with the big teeth. She _had_ to beat them up; it was the only way to stay safe, to stay on top. They stopped bugging you if they were scared of you.

But faced with a few too many demerits on her permanent record (both the paper one in the principal’s office at Bishop Loughlin Memorial and the less tangible one supposedly kept by God), Rosa and her parents decided it was time to take another tack. So she transferred to ballet school, hopeful that the rigorous program would give her a way to channel her rage.

It worked, for a while. After long days of calf raises, grand jetés and barre stretches, she was too exhausted to beat anyone up. But then her body got stronger and the work got easier for her, and the other ballerinas were just like the Jesus brats all over again.

One day at the barre, the pink-lipped blonde princess next to Rosa told her she’d never become a prima ballerina because she had “man shoulders” and her head was too big. And Rosa snapped. “You’ll never become a prima ballerina with a broken nose and no front teeth,” she remembers screaming as she pummeled the bitch into the sprung studio floor.

So that was that. The book was open and shut on Rosa Diaz’s dancing career. No one was surprised, really.

But this? This was supposed to be different.

Way back in Catholic school, an ironically misguided guidance counselor made Rosa take a stupid aptitude test. She scored high in a number of different areas, and her top career recommendations were impressive: attorney, corporation CFO, marine biologist, air traffic controller… but when the guidance counselor reached number five on the list and read out “police officer,” a light switched on in some dark, hidden part of Rosa’s heart. Something about that felt… right. Like destiny.

She’d filed away that little moment of clarity for years, unsure what it meant or what to do about it. But when ballet school turned out to be a bust, she had to rack her brain for something, anything, she could fall back on. Staring at the wall of pamphlets at her local career centre one day, her eyes landed on a police academy brochure. And that was that. Rosa Diaz’s fate was sealed.

But now she’s living what was supposed to be her dream, and she hasn’t become the warm, likeable, profoundly fulfilled person she thought she would be when she started at the academy. She hasn’t even made any friends.

Well. She has _one_ friend, sort of. But she’s not sure she even likes him.

“ _Hoooo_ boy!” Jake Peralta crows as he flops onto the barstool next to Rosa. “What a day! These guns are on _fi-yaaah_.” He flexes his noodly biceps at her, and she silently rolls her eyes and hunches even further over the straight vodka she’s been nursing since classes let out for the evening.

Jake catches the bartender’s eye. “Smirnoff Ice, garçon.” He grins at Rosa. “I like my booze sugary and my sugar boozy.” Ever the chatterbox, he finally notices Rosa hasn’t said a word. “Hey, Diaz! _Helloooo_? Anyone in there?” He waves a hand in front of her face; his fingers are all bruised and cut-up, like every other police academy newbie this month, Rosa included.

She takes a long pull of vodka. “Shut up, Peralta. I’m trying to drink. In _peace_.”

He just laughs at her. The bartender brings him his bottle of sugar-booze and he seems to chug half of it in one go.

Rosa looks on, marginally impressed. “Someone had a hard day,” she says softly. It takes effort to care. She’s trying. Trying to be less of a bitch to everyone. The first step of changing is deciding to change, right? And Jake may be an idiot sometimes, and maybe the only reason he wants to be her friend is because they share a fondness for leather jackets and he clearly thinks she’s hot, but – it’s something. He’s all she’s got. She’s going to try.

“You talking to me?” he says. “I didn’t have a hard day. I had an _awesome_ day. _Man_ , I love cop school!” He practically shouts this, and Rosa wonders if the Smirnoff hit him that quickly or if he’s just that loud. Probably a little of both, she guesses.

“Yeah, cop school’s okay.”

He stares at her, bug-eyed. “OKAY?!” He shoves her leather-clad shoulder and her nostrils flare. No one is supposed to touch her. “We just spent the day practicing cuffing perps, whipping batons around, and doing pull-ups. How is that ‘okay’? How is that not the _coolest thing ever_?!”

He’s definitely way too loud for Rosa’s liking. But the vodka has relaxed her chronically tense smile muscles enough that she can’t suppress a snicker when Peralta mentions pull-ups. He did a _single_ pull-up, _one_ , before his arms gave out and he cried uncle. Rosa managed twenty-seven before the instructor barked at her to stop showing off. It made her feel good to know she could outperform most of the jerks in that room. And all because of ballet training.

“What are you smiling about?” Peralta asks suspiciously. “I never know what’s going on in that head of yours, Diaz. You’re a brick wall. A foxy, curvaceous, badass brick wall.”

She punches his arm, but not like she means it. If she were a little drunker, she’d blush.

“What’s going on in my head,” she starts tentatively, “is that I wish I was different.”

Peralta sips from his Smirnoff, looking remarkably like a little boy slurping root beer from out of his mom’s fridge. “Different how? From what I can tell, you’re kinda perfect. Except for the whole striking-terror-into-the-hearts-of-everyone-who-meets-you thing. And even that arguably has its merits.”

 _This_ , Rosa realizes, is why she hasn’t told Peralta to leave her the hell alone even though he’s been following her around since they met at orientation: he’s the only one who’s not scared of her, not intimidated by her, not weird around her. He’s flirty, sure, but in a way that doesn’t make her uncomfortable or defensive. She could kick his ass any time, but she doesn’t want to. Being around him’s just kind of… okay. Nice. And he’s one of the only people in her whole life she can say that about.

She sighs. “That’s kind of the problem. I don’t want to strike terror into people’s hearts or whatever.” He looks at her like he can see right through her. “Okay, maybe I do, a little,” she concedes, “but I don’t want to be this walking ball of rage all the time. I want to at least be able to control myself better.”

Peralta lets out a long, low whistle. “You seemed pretty in control when you were beating up that punching bag the other day. I wish I had half as much ‘control’ as you, Diaz.”

Rosa lowers her eyes to the wood of the bar counter and traces its whorls with her long, crimson nails. “I only did that because Lopez pissed me off right before practice,” she says, pressing her mouth into a hard line. “He called me ‘mamacita.’ I wanted to smack that dumb mouth off his ugly face. So I beat the crap out of the punching bag instead.”

Jake raises his eyebrows. “Remind me never to call you ‘mamacita.’” He earns a small smile from her. “Hey, but really, I think it’s great that you’re so self-aware. I basically only have three emotions: happy, drunk, and horny.” He laughs to himself. “No, but seriously, I’m uncomfortable with feelings. So, good for you,” he mumbles.

They drink in silence for a little while longer. Well, silence except for Jake warbling along to the Elton John song playing on the bar’s stereo. Which Rosa is surprisingly okay with.

* * *

The following week, as Rosa’s leaving the ladies’ locker room after a training session, Jake jogs up to her and falls into step. She’s walking fast, like always, but he’s got lanky legs and can keep up.

“I’m going home, Peralta,” she barks.

“I know,” he replies cheerfully. “Thought I’d walk with you.”

Rosa opens her mouth to respond but realizes she has no objections, not really. She’s so used to pushing people away, telling creeps on the street to fuck off, standing up for herself around mouthy jerks, but Peralta’s not any of those people. It won’t actually kill her to have some company on her walk home. So she lapses into silence and lets him follow her.

“I did some Googling on your behalf.” He thrusts one hand into the pocket of his leather jacket and pulls out a printed sheet of paper, which he unfolds. “According to the American Psychological Association – who, I would assume, know their shit – one way to deal with rage is to take up some kind of slow, gentle exercise, like yoga.”

Rosa snorts. “Have you seen the losers who go to yoga classes? I hate those idiots. I’d punch ‘em right in the chakras.”

Jake eyes her warily. “Um, okay, psycho.” He glances at his print-out again. “How about a mantra? When you start to get mad, you can tell yourself, ‘Relax,’ or ‘Take it easy,’ or count to ten.”

Rosa shakes her head resolutely. “Don’t think so. When I get mad, I lose my head. Can’t think about anything except beating the shit out of whoever’s pissing me off.”

Jake scans the paper some more. He starts to fall behind Rosa as she picks up her pace, but he catches up again. “Uh, I have a feeling you’re not gonna like this,” he says, “but have you thought about seeing a psychiatrist?”

Rosa _has_ thought about it, but every time she does, she flashes back to the Catholic school counselor who advised her to contact a professional exorcist ASAP. Seeing a shrink again, even a secular one, is not an appealing notion. “No,” she says simply. Jake doesn’t need to hear her whole life story.

He crumples up the APA print-out and jettisons it into a nearby trash can as they continue to walk. “Well, so much for that.”

Rosa feels a twinge of something, something like regret or sadness or guilt or some dumb shit like that, and she slows her walk a little. “Sorry, Peralta,” she tells him tersely. “Thanks for trying.”

He shrugs. “S’okay. Just trying to help out my friend.” He reaches out an arm like he wants to put it around her shoulders, then catches sight of her glare and thinks better of it. “I’ll work on it some more. I know we can figure this out.”

They’ve arrived at her building. She pulls her keys out of her pocket. “See you tomorrow, Peralta,” she says. He waves cheerfully and walks off toward the subway station.

Watching him go, she smiles, only because she knows he won’t see it. _My friend,_ he called her. She’s his friend.

She smiles at his retreating form for a moment longer before shaking it off and heading into the building.

* * *

A couple weeks later, Rosa’s at the academy gym again, practicing her roundhouse kicks, when her cellphone starts buzzing in her pocket. She wipes her brow and ducks out the back door of the gym to answer it. “Hello?”

It’s her mom, speaking in clipped Spanish. “ _Su abuela_ ,” she says, and there are a lot of other words and phrases but all Rosa absorbs is that her grandmother is dead.

She covers her mouth with one hand and sinks down against the academy’s brick wall. It takes her a minute to realize she’s crying.

Peralta sticks his head out the door and starts, “Rosa, are you done with the – “ before he notices her and stops cold.

“ _Te quiero, adiós_ ,” Rosa manages to mutter into the phone, unsure if she’s said anything else to her mother. Everything’s a blur. She hangs up the phone and buries her head in her hands. Her fingers come away wet.

“You okay?” Peralta says uncertainly. They haven’t been friends _that_ long. They’re not quite at the consoling-each-other-at-tearful-times level of friendship yet. But, then, Rosa’s never been at that level of friendship with _anyone_ , unless _maybe_ you count her mom, so she’s not even sure how it would feel to have a friend like that.

She sniffles and wipes her eyes on her bare arm. It’s cold out here in just her gym clothes. “My mom called. My abuela died.” Her vision goes blurry as more tears flood into her eyes. “Oh, fuck.” She doesn’t know what to do with her hands, or where to look, or whether she should be mad that Peralta’s just staring at her. She’s utterly at a loss.

Jake squats down beside her and pats her on the back. It might be the first time they’ve ever touched, outside of her punching his arm and them spotting each other while they work out in the gym. It’s… kind of nice, actually.

And then she totally loses it. She plants her face against the shoulder of his sweatshirt and _sobs_. He wraps his arms around her, uncertainly at first, like he thinks she’ll throttle him for touching her like this, but then his touch relaxes and she’s pressed all the way up against his chest, circled in his arms. They’re not so noodly anymore. Definitely stronger than when they started at the academy a couple months ago.

They sit for a while, and it’s silent except for the low rasp of Rosa’s shaky sobs and the faraway pounding of their classmates working out inside the gym.

Finally, Rosa gets to a point where she’s cried as much as she’s going to, and her breathing steadies. She wipes her face and untangles herself from Peralta’s arms.

“Um, thanks,” she says awkwardly. This is uncharted territory for her. For him, too, judging by the look on his face.

He straightens his sweatshirt, which, Rosa notices with a hint of shame, is stained with her tears in several places. “Not a problem,” he says. He helps her to her feet and they stand there in the cold, sun starting to set. “Rosa, seriously… Let me know if there’s anything I can do.” He looks down at the ground, kicks a pebble with the toe of his sneaker. “I know how much it sucks to lose a family member, so. Whatever you need.”

So many different emotions well up inside Rosa at once that she doesn’t even know what she’s feeling, so she just nods, arranges her face so it hopefully approaches normality, and strides back into the gym.

* * *

A couple weeks later, after the funeral, they go to Rosa’s abuela’s house to look through her stuff, deciding what to keep, what to sell, what to throw away. Rosa only got halfway through asking Jake to help before he said yes. Asking was hard, but he made it easy for her. He’s pretty good at doing that.

“Stack of stained doilies?” he asks, holding them up. ‘Stained’ is a slightly superfluous word here; they’re in an old woman’s basement, so most of the things they’re examining are at least a little stained.

Rosa glances up from the box of magazines she’s been picking through, and wrinkles her nose. “Toss. Those look like they’re from 1956.”

He puts the doilies in the big bag marked “Trash” and moves onto the next thing. This work has taken all day and it’s going to take many more days. Rosa’s still stunned that Jake’s helping, though, she has to remind herself, this is probably just what friends do. And they’re friends now. She’ll help him with something else when the time comes. Like maybe his pull-up form, which is still terrible.

“Spanish recipe books?” he says. There’s five or six of them; he fans them out for Rosa to look at. She breathes in sharply and grabs for them.

“So many recipes I remember from when I was a kid,” she groans fondly as she flips through them. “Damn, I wish I could cook. Maybe I should learn.”

Jake grins at her. “Doubt that’d help with your rage issues. Cooking takes a lot of patience, y’know.” He continues to rifle through the box in front of him. “My mom taught me how to make scrambled eggs when I was twelve, and I broke a lot of eggs and cried a lot. But then I figured it out and now I make a mean plate of eggs.”

After perusing the cookbooks for a little while longer, Rosa sets them aside and opens abuela’s closet, meaning to start sorting through coats and hats. But then she spots a leather box with metal buckles and actually gasps.

“What did you find?” Jake calls from his spot on the floor. “Yet more doilies?”

“No,” Rosa says. She drops to her knees, extracts the box from where it’s wedged under some religious figurines, and blows dust off the top of it. “It's her coin collection.”

She brings the box out and sits down next to Jake, then undoes the latches on the box and carefully slides it open. The coins inside sparkle like they’re newly minted, although most of them are at least a few decades old. Rosa runs her fingers gingerly over the gleaming pesetas.

“She used to let me help her shine them when I was little,” she tells Jake. “We’d use old rags and dish soap. We’d do it for hours, just sitting and talking.” She smiles at the memory.

Jake moves closer to examine the coins, and whistles appreciatively. “Your abuela sure knew how to shine a coin. Props, man.”

Grief does strange things to a person’s verbal filter, so Rosa’s been babbling about dumb stuff a lot more than usual, and if it were anyone but Jake, she’d be embarrassed. But it’s Jake, and he says embarrassing stuff practically non-stop, so she doesn’t beat herself up too much for divulging random old stories and even occasional bursts of emotion. “I used to feel so calm when I was helping her with this stuff,” she says, turning one of the coins over in her hand. “It was like the whole world disappeared except for me and my abuela and the money and the cloth. Something about the repetitive motion… My mind got real quiet. I miss that.”

She folds her hand so the coin presses into her palm, and feels genuinely comforted for the first time since that phone call from her mother a couple weeks before.

Jake is looking at her with wide eyes. “What?” she says, that hardened tone creeping back into her voice.

“Nothing,” he replies. It’s not nothing, but she decides not to press the issue. “Hey, do you think you can part with one of these coins? They’re just so cool. I love old stuff like this.”

There are easily dozens in the box, so Rosa nods and chooses one to give to him. It glistens gold in the dim light as Jake holds it up for a closer look.

“Neat,” he says, and tucks it into the pocket of his jeans.

Then Rosa’s mother comes bustling down the basement stairs with two glasses of orange juice, and she coos Spanish words of praise at Jake until he blushes.

Rosa’s glad her mom’s around to thank Jake for his help, because Rosa often has trouble with simple phrases like “Thank you” and “I appreciate you,” even when she’s feeling those feelings so intensely that they drown out everything else in her head and heart.

* * *

Their time at the academy flies by. Turns out long days at school are actually kind of fun when you’ve got a friend with you.

Graduation comes so quickly Rosa can hardly believe it, but at the same time, she’s excited to be done. She’ll be assigned to a precinct and then she’ll get to do real police work. This feels so much more right than Catholic school or ballerina ambitions ever did; she knows she’ll actually be good at this, anger problems or no.

All their academy classmates head to the bar after the ceremony, diplomas in hand. And while Jake and Rosa want to join in the festivities as much as anyone (giant mugs of beer sound _wonderful_ right about now), they’re not crazy about hanging out with all the meatheads in their class, even the ones they’ve sort of gotten to know. So they retreat to a booth in the back of the bar, close enough to the group that they can still hear the celebratory cheers and laughter of those new police, but far enough that they don’t have to actually talk to them. Perfect.

“We’re gonna be cops, Rosa!” Jake announces for at least the third time today. He chugs half his glass of beer and grins at her with wet lips.

“I know!” Rosa replies. Normally exclamation points do not sneak into her voice under any circumstances, but she’s kind of drunk and genuinely happy and Jake’s the only one who can hear her, anyway.

“I hope we get assigned to the same precinct, or at least pretty close,” he says. “We could even be partners! We work so well together.”

She laughs. “Yeah, you can distract the perps with dumb jokes so I can tackle and cuff them,” she says.

“Hey!” he protests. “I can do cool stuff too, you know. I’m not _just_ hilarious and charismatic. Look at these babies.” He flexes his biceps, which, indeed, are noticeably more toned than they were when she first met him. Looking at him, she feels a hint of something like pride.

“Oh, I almost forgot,” he says, and starts rifling through his backpack. “I got you something. A little graduation gift.”

“Peralta, you idiot,” she says, secretly horrified. “No one got anyone any gifts. I didn’t get you anything!”

“It’s okay. Don’t worry about it.” He finds what he’s looking for: a small black box, clean and fancy-looking. For a second, Rosa thinks it might be an engagement ring, but she’s never really gotten romantic vibes from Jake, and she also knows he’d fully expect her to beat him up if he tried a stunt like that, so she decides he’s probably not proposing marriage.

He slides the box across the gritty bar table. She flips it open and her jaw drops.

It’s the coin she gave him from her abuela’s collection, strung on a beautiful gold chain. There’s a scrawled note tucked into the top of the box: “Happy graduation, Diaz. From Jake.”

He’s looking at her so nervously that it’s almost like he _did_ propose marriage. “Um, when you said cleaning coins with your grandma made you feel calm, I thought maybe you could use that to help you with your anger,” he explains quickly. “So I had it put onto a necklace so you can wear it every day. If you ever start to feel out of control, you can just touch the coin and maybe it’ll calm you down.”

Rosa stares at the necklace, then back at Jake. “I – uh – wow.” She rakes a hand through her hair. “Thanks, Peralta,” she says.

He looks slightly crestfallen. “It’s okay if you hate it,” he says. “You don’t really seem like a jewelry kind of girl. I guess I should have known.” He takes a big gulp of beer.

Rosa shakes her head firmly. “No. Seriously. I love it. Thank you.” She looks at him with all the sincerity she can muster. “I know I’m not good with… words and feelings and stuff. But really. Thank you.” With a sudden rush of courage, she puts her hand on his shoulder and squeezes. “You’re a good friend.” She takes the necklace out of the box and gingerly puts it on, turning around so Jake can do up the clasp for her.

Once it’s on, she looks down at the coin sitting on her chest and grins. She fingers the gold disc gently and that old, familiar calmness immediately floods over her. “Hey, it works,” she says.

He smiles. “Looks good on you, too. Never thought I’d see the day when _you’d_ look girly, Diaz.”

She punches his arm and they drink their beer.

 

**Author's Note:**

> I've been wanting to write a Rosa!fic for ages, because all my other fics focus on Jake and Amy but Rosa is such an interesting character and so much fun to write!
> 
> I noticed that she often wears this gold coin-like necklace on the show, and it struck me as odd because her character doesn't seem sentimental. So I decided to write an origin story for that necklace (with heavy doses of Jake/Rosa friendship 'cause I love that shit).


End file.
